Master Your Mise with These Bowls
Mise en place (the practice of preparing and organizing ingredients before cooking) is one of the easiest ways to improve your kitchen skills. Yet dedicated mise bowls often fall short—too small, fragile or weirdly sized. That’s why we created our own All-Purpose Kitchen Bowls. They’re perfect for prepping, serving and storing. Measuring 5.5 inches in diameter, these enameled steel bowls also are resistant to chips, cracks and heat, handily weathering metal utensils and dishwasher cycles. And after the cooking is done, the set can be neatly stacked away, taking up minimal cabinet space. Sets of four available for $49.95 at 177milkstreet.com/ma25-bowls.
Mexico’s Answer to Bourbon
If you could distill the spirit of a tender-sweet corn tortilla into an alcoholic beverage, it would be Nixta Licor de Elote, a lightly sweet corn-based liquor from Mexico. Nixta is made from heirloom cacahuazintle corn using traditional nixtamalization, the same process used to soften corn for tortillas. Try the light, whiskey-like liquor in place of bourbon in cocktails; it makes an excellent old fashioned. Available where liquor is sold for about $25 for a 750-milliliter bottle.
Lunchbox or Work of Art? Both!
Tiffin boxes are the secret to Mumbai’s legendary dabbawala lunch delivery system. The stacked, multi-compartment lunch boxes are filled at home, then delivered by an army of couriers to workers at their offices in time for lunch. The multi-tiered containers keep multiple dishes warm and neatly separated. We love this vibrant twist on the tiffin box from Novica. Sourced through fair-trade partnerships with local artisans, each one is hand-painted with colorful designs, while the stainless steel construction ensures easy cleanup and rugged durability. Available for $19.99 at novica.com.
We Reinvented the Dutch Oven
Much as we love Dutch ovens, we knew the basic design could be improved on. So we created our own. We gave our cast-iron Widebody Dutch Oven an 11-inch base to maximize surface area for browning. Shorter sides make it easier to maneuver items in this 5-quart pot. And it has two ingenious lids: one glass, for monitoring cooking without letting heat escape, and a flat top that duals as a griddle. Thanks to its enamel coating, our pot also can handle tomato sauces and other acidic foods (a shortcoming of classic cast iron). A magnetized acacia trivet streamlines serving, taking this pot seamlessly from stove to table. Available for $159.95 at 177milkstreet.com/ma25-oven.
Grind, Don’t Pound, Your Seasonings
Indonesian cuisine is built around spice pastes, which cooks typically make using a cobek (mortar) and uleka (pestle). Designed with a handle-like grip, the uleka is meant to press and drag ingredients across the wide, flat surface of the cobek, as well as pound them. That makes it particularly adept at reducing tough, fibrous ingredients—such as ginger, fresh chilies and lemon grass—to smooth pastes. IndoFoodStore.com sells an 8-inch granite version for about $25.
A Drink So Good, It’s Golden
Haldi doodh, or “golden milk,” is a vibrant Indian drink steeped in centuries of Ayurvedic tradition. Its signature hue and earthy depth come from turmeric, complemented by warming spices such as cinnamon, ginger and cardamom. It’s a soothing, delicious beverage that’s as comforting as it is flavorful. And Verve Culture’s Golden Milk Mix makes it easy to enjoy—just simmer a few teaspoons in your favorite milk, like hot cocoa with a sophisticated twist. Packaged in a beautiful reusable tin, each mix yields over 50 servings. Available for $28.95 per 7-ounce tin at 177milkstreet.com/ma25-mix.
Eat Your Way Through the Back Roads of Italy
From Sicily to Venice, our latest book explores real Italian cooking and the stories of the people behind it.
In Italy, cooks throw away their garlic, they don’t stir polenta, and they never labor over risotto. Our latest cookbook, Milk Street Backroads Italy, reveals the real cooking of America’s favorite cuisine, as well as the stories of the people behind it.
We traveled across Italy to learn from home cooks and chefs, from fine dining to family-run trattorias, at farms and markets, cheese shops and enotecas. Along the way, we found fresh takes on classics, as well as plenty of little-known regional favorites that never crossed the Atlantic.
We found new ways with pasta, from foolproof cacio e pepe in Rome to Puglia’s olive oil-crisped fettuccine with chickpeas and a lemony pesto from Amalfi, where the pasta itself is enriched with citrus. Plus some surprising tomato sauces, including spaghetti all’assassina from Bari—spicy, charred and made in a skillet.
We visited a Neapolitan trattoria where five sisters serenade diners with opera and serve an eggplant Parmesan that’s rich, but never sodden. In northern Italy, we made meatball-like bread dumplings simmered in chicken broth. And in Sardinia, we tried a hearty herb soup studded with pancetta, beans and tiny nuggets of pasta.
Milk Street Backroads Italy gives you a seat at the table with Italian cooks sharing the food they love, handed down from generation to generation. Preorder your copy now at 177milkstreet.com/italy.
